Not a Joke: Texas Instruments Unveil SEXY Amplifier

Every once in a while, an interesting product appears on the market. From one side, the "interesting" part can come out of a manufacturer making such a decision to sell a car named "LaCrosse" to the French-speaking market. For those not familiar with the story, "Lacrosse" is a Canadian-French slang word related to this particular action.

From another side, sometimes engineers are able to slip hidden messages inside hardware or a computer game, and we usually call those Easter Eggs. Thanks to a XtremeSystems forum user "sin0822", we learned that engineers at Texas Instruments managed to slip one up to the management.

Product rendering of Texas Instruments LM358 Dual Operational Amplifier. As you can see, this image is for reference only…

LM358, a Dual Operational Amplifier by Texas Instruments is such a case. According to the product rendering (pictured above), this device consists of "two independent, high-gain, frequency-compensated operational amplifiers designed to operate from a single supply over a wide range of voltages. Operation from split supplies also is possible if the difference between the two supplies is 3V to 32V, and VCC is at least 1.5V more positive than the input common-mode voltage."

The quality of LM358 was such that GigaByte decided to put it on their top overclocking motherboard, the X58A-OC

As you can see, a very simple explanation what this line of products actually does.The quality of TI’s LM358 was such that Gigabyte Technology, a respectable motherboard manufacturer decided to use exactly that model on their top of the line, cream of the crop – X58A-OC motherboard. This motherboard is probably the best overclocking motherboard on the market, featuring from simple overclocking features such as the 4GHz button (pressing that button raises the clock of your Core i7 processor to 4GHz) to very advanced +1, -1MHz and voltage steps of 0.3V to enable best clocks for the world’s best overclockers. However, the TI’s LM358 amplifier doesn’t look like the one in the rendered image. In fact, it looks like this:

As you can see, LM358 was so good at amplifying that the engineers thought it was sexy

Be deliberate or accidental, we believe that geek porn fans decided that quite unexpectedly, Texas Instruments and their LM358 amplifier receive the award for sexiest hardware of the year. After all, it says so.

About the AuthorTheo Valich

Focused on creating synergy between various industries, creating next-gen solutions.Passionate about the new and emerging technologies. Work experience spans from game development and event organizing, editing magazine and on-line publications to aerospace development.Specialties: Team Leadership / Management / Technical Consultant / Funding.Enjoys travelling around the world and meeting new people. :)